So, friends, every day do something that won't compute...Give your approval to all you cannot understand...Ask the questions that have no answers. Put your faith in two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years...Laugh. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts...Practice resurrection.
May we today be touched by grace, fascinated and moved by your creation, energized by the power of new growth at work in your world.
May we move beyond viewing this life only through a frame, but touch it and be touched by it, know it and be known by it, love it and be loved by it.
May our bodies, our minds, our spirits, learn a new rhythm paced by the rhythmic pulse of the whole created order.
May spring come to us, be in us, and recreate life in us...
Rise up in the early morning when the sun
shines in the east.
Rise up and see the sun as she shines in the earth,
She sheds her kindness on the earth in such splendor.
...Rise, bless the morning...
Your light shall shine...brighter than the sun...
Keep this light shining in your hearts, spirits of earth.
A Voice not daunted by "You Can't do that!"
A voice lighting fires for children
Whose spark of hope
Is fast sputtering out
A voice that saw the gift in each
And opened the door to winds of change
That ignited the dormant creative possibilities in each
And gave them the vision, power and will to transform
The world.
In Memoriam
Fred Taylor
May 23, 1932-November 23, 2019
Fred was the President of the Friends of Silence Board and a founding partner of Still Point Mountain Retreat after his retirement as Executive Director of For Love of Children, a nonprofit organization focused on the needs of at risk children in Washington, D.C.
FLOC's Outdoor program has been an active participant and steward on the Rolling Ridge Conservancy property in West Virginia. Friends of Silence is housed at Still Point and Rolling Ridge. All of us who knew and worked with Fred miss his kindness and his warm way of offering critical insight and practical training in the formation and care of organizations seeking to do good work in the world.
Both "For Love of Children" and "Friends of Silence" are accepting donations in memory of Fred.
God who loves us knows us. We long to be known, not only from the outside but from within. We feel that if others knew us as we really are, with our hopes, dreams and struggles to be whole, they would have a compassionate and tolerant love for us. Conversely, were we to live for an hour within the mind of another, even that of a social outcast, we would come away humbled and more understanding. We cannot know people from within, only from without and with difficulty despite our love. Not so with God. The Spirit of God has been poured out on us. God has made a home in us.
What if becoming who and what we truly are happens not through striving and trying but by recognizing and receiving the people and places and practices that offer us the warmth of encouragement when we need to unfold?
How would this shape the choices you make about how to spend today?
I love you, gentlest of Ways...
You, the great homesickness we could never shake off,
you, the forest that always surrounded us...
Once we begin to see our lives within our own families as opportunities for spiritual development, the possibility of inner growth is unlimited. Home is no longer just a place to eat and sleep, but a school for our souls and spirits. Each day yields its lesson, and our children and partners become our teachers. We find our rhythm and learn to harmonize. We learn how to cherish and care for one another and how to care for our own souls as well. We learn to dance together, how to lead and when to follow. In so doing, we bring about changes both large and small, for our children, nurtured by rhythm, may ultimately heal and restore the rhythm of the world.
This is the bright home
In which I live,
This is where
I ask
My friends
To come,
This is where I want to love all the things
It has taken me so long
To learn to love.
Sink down into the center of each flowering moment.
What if the moment does not flower?
Sink down into the center of the moment.
What if I can't find the center?
Sink down into the moment.
What if the moment is gone?
Sink down.
What if I can't sink down?
Then be still.
The moment will find you.
The center will surround you.
The flower will bloom within you.
It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
Resplendent and eternal is Wisdom,
readily perceived by those who listen
in the Silence of the heart.
Wisdom hastens to make Herself known;
She is available to all who love and seek Her,
who awakens Her from within
will not be disappointed;
for Wisdom awaits at the threshold.
How do we hold both the magnificence and tragedy of the world, as if we stand at a threshold with Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings, looking in two directions? ...How do we find the way if we can't see around the bend? ...In our time of disturbance and radical change, we are crossing a threshold, a portal, or an unseen bridge from one world to another. It could be said that the bridge is either collapsing beneath us, or being made as we walk together...
Silence wells up from an emptiness within us, but it is an emptiness freely and fully accepted...A moment comes when silence alone can express the extraordinary richness in our heart. Such a silence enfolds a person gently and powerfully and always comes from within. It establishes a zone of peace and quiet around the one who is silent, where God can be irresistibly felt as present.
Even though working actively for justice is essential, one of the greatest gifts we can give to a troubled world is the presence of a peaceful heart...Wrapping ourselves in silence, solitude, and gratitude is a sure way to open our hearts again to perspective and simplicity.